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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28468569">noli me tangere</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rodeoclown/pseuds/rodeoclown'>rodeoclown</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Berlermo Secret Santa, Character Study, First Meetings, Friends to Lovers, Jealousy, M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Terminal Illnesses, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Sexual Tension, reliable narrator, this is the least angsty i get</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 04:08:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,568</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28468569</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rodeoclown/pseuds/rodeoclown</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Desire leads to coveting, and coveting leads to stealing." - Maimonides</p><p>(Or <strike>five</strike> seven times Andrés was jealous, and one time he wasn’t.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa/Palermo | Martín Berrote</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/formulares/gifts">formulares</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A gift for formulares for the Berlermo Secret Santa event. Thank you so much for the prompt (5+1 and jealous Andrés) and I’m so very very sorry that this is so late. Your prompt got away from me and grew much longer than I originally planned, and then I got busy with family visiting after Christmas before I could finish the final edits. I humbly submit it to you as a New Year’s gift instead, and hope you like?</p><p>This takes place in a similar-ish universe to the show, but I have done some significant rearranging and conflating of the timeline, events and character’s roles.  Content warning for discussion of Andrés’ illness/mortality, his misogynist thoughts, mild acts of self harm, and the occasional use of religious metaphors.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>There was once a type of cancer so terrible that the sufferer could not bear to be touched, and the disease was thus called noli me tangere (Latin: “do not touch me”) – Rizval, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Social-Cancer)"><strong>The Social Cancer</strong></a> </em>
</p>
<p>I. May</p>
<p>When Andrés receives the diagnosis, within the bland, undecorated walls of the hospital waiting room office in Oviedo, he does not feel any strong emotion. On very few occasions has he felt any emotion, truly. Adults had remarked upon it when he was a child, that he seemed composed in the way to already be an adult. Andrés grew up aware he was lacking something, that it was not a compliment, that people expected things from him that he could not deliver. The first time he became aware of the difference was when, after coaxing a school friend of his during his first year of primary school to climb the brick school wall during a break and play hooky, they had both slipped and fallen onto the pavement below. As soon as they had hit the ground, his schoolmate had started sobbing, high wailing sobs that had brought the school attendant running, but Andrés had simply blinked in disbelief and slipped away as quickly as possible, leaving his friend to take the punishment, aware in a distant way, that his own knee and shin were throbbing. His mother had scolded him, afterwards, for running away. <em>Did you not feel bad</em>, she had asked, <em>to leave your friend to face his fate alone</em>? He had been aware of her look of disappointment when he had replied truthfully, but even that look hadn’t made him feel bad about it.</p>
<p>As he became a teenager and then an adult, it had caused problems in his relationships with women. They accused him of a lack of romance, as if the flowers and paintings he gifted them with were not the highest of all romance, of art. They wanted something more intangible on certain occasions, some feeling of longing he lacked. For him to miss them while he was away. But this, Andrés, had learned, was something of which he was incapable.</p>
<p>He could not even say that he had felt much when his mother finally succumbed to the same disease now staring him down, lying on a single bed in a small, dingy room in Madrid, her always trembling fingers that used to rest on his forehead when she sang him to sleep, now quiet and lifeless in his own hands. Nor when, from a faraway boarding school, on scholarship, he received the letter from Sergio announcing their shared father’s death, a disappointingly simple headline and article buried on the back pages of the newspaper. Nor when he picked up his younger brother from the group home he was staying at afterwards, and hugged him tightly, as he knows that an older brother ought, and rescued him from his bland future into their life of romantic adventure. Not even when he left prison for the first time after three years, after their fifth heist went off the rails, and hugged his brother for the second time in his life.</p>
<p>He wishes that on this similarly momentous occasion he might more suitably play the tragic hero. He wishes that the news might cause him to faint, with sadness or terror. That it might cause his heart to ache for the beauty of the world, like it did Keats. That it might rise up over him with the strength of a wave in the Gulf of La Spezia, crashing over Lord Byron, the same wave that would later doom Shelley. But nothing comes. Perhaps the best he can do, the best he can ever do, is irritation. This is, in itself, irritating. And irritated, he pinches the skin of his wrists with his fingers, fingers which already have started to betray him, have already started not to do the things he asks them to do. He stares at the red marks they make, and tries to imagine what real pain or grief might feel like.  </p>
<p>But this lack of sentiment, this inability to feel things properly that curses Andrés will not impede his artistic performance. Especially now that he’s been blessed with such a special role to play. In an effort to cultivate his character better, once Sergio has come to pick him up in his small hatchback, has looked quietly at the doctor’s lab records when Andrés passes them over, and they have haltingly, practically, discussed ways of acquiring the necessary medications while Sergio’s hand slides anxiously over the stick shift, he suggests that they move to France.</p>
<p>------</p>
<p>II. June</p>
<p>On their first evening in Paris, Andrés makes some discrete inquiries and finds his way to a seedy enough bar with a certain Bohemian flare that suits the announcement of his newly acquired fate.  The kind of place frequented by students, petty drug dealers and wannabe poets rather than the more sophisticated white collar criminal set Andrés is used to dealing with. He has dressed appropriately, in a suit jacket and tie, but with the tie loosened, in a more rakish manner than he usually adopts and, against his natural inclinations, his shirt is un-ironed and still as wrinkled as when he pulled it out of his suitcase.  He notices the piano in the corner of the basement level bar when he enters, but it is too early for anyone to be playing yet. Still, it is already crowded, and the din of conversation that hums within is entirely French, as Andrés has discovered is typical of this otherwise cosmopolitan city.</p>
<p>He has been sitting for an hour or so, nursing a glass of surprisingly decent wine, attempting to absorb the ambience, when the first recognizable words of the evening—spoken in Spanish but with a heavy Argentinian accent—cut across the din.  It does not take long to follow the sound of them back to their owner, seated at one of the corner tables and seemingly engaged in a heated philosophical debate with a few other men.</p>
<p>Despite the impression given by his tone, he is not that imposing of a man, physically. Among the three of his companions, he is the shortest. His nose is slightly too large for his face, his belly slightly too soft for typical handsomeness, his clothing plain and slapdash. Yet something about his demeanor makes Andrés’ fingers itch with an urge to paint he has not felt in a while. The argument the man is engaged in seems to be on the subject of love, for Andrés overhears his words more clearly when his voice rises again—</p>
<p>“Love is the root of all suffering, eventually. It is better to take many lovers and care for none of them, than to let yourself become attached to someone who, being human, and therefore, selfish, will only hurt you in the end.”</p>
<p>The words hit a sore point within Andrés, and he finds himself rise and walking over to the table. He clears his throat, to gain their attention, and says in his own proper Castilian accent, “Is that not what defines Love, though, its very selflessness?”</p>
<p>The man’s eyes look up and narrow at his interruption, but his friends invite him to sit down, happy to have a scapegoat to divert the attention from them. They coax him with the bottle of Absinthe they are sharing, but Andrés declines, while he finds himself the subject of an intense lecture by their undeterred companion on the higher emotions. Andrés returns his verbal salvos in kind, calmly, perhaps a touch arrogantly, which only sets the man off further. Andrés realizes eventually that he is deliberately playing up the clinical tone of his words simply for the joy of observing the opposite, less concerned for truth than for his adversary’s reaction.  It works for a while, until suddenly, the man, perhaps sensing that Andrés believes his own words less and less, and has been painted into a corner of arguing the absurd, laughs loudly instead. He extends a hand as if calling a truce, and introduces himself as Martín. Andrés is so charmed by the sudden shift in his demeanor, now being showered with just as much warmth as previously he had been ire, that he gives his own real name in response.</p>
<p>Their conversation becomes less combative after that, but no less intense. Martín’s companions eventually make their excuses as the evening wears on into night, and the piano begins a soft background melody. But Martín stays. It has been a while since Andrés has had someone with which to converse on these kinds of intellectual matters, and he is loath to end the night as well. When their conversation shifts to the subject of the arts, and to architecture specifically, he slips up a little again. Cannot resist the temptation to tell Martín about a particular building that fascinates him, El Banco de España, and some of the reputed oddities of its design. He even makes a comment about the impossibility of stealing the gold kept under it with what he hopes is just enough of a joking tone to allow for plausible deniability.  </p>
<p>It turns out that Martín has studied engineering at university, and this observation prompts another lecture upon the intersection of the fields of engineering and architecture, of style and practicality. In the middle of this soliloquy, Andrés grabs his wrist, offhandedly, to stop a particularly effusive hand gesture that threatens to knock the contents of both of their drinks onto the floor, and Martín freezes and looks up at him. There is a vaguely fragile, vaguely longing look in his drunken, watery eyes that Andrés wants also to steal. This is the moment that The Plan begins.</p>
<p>------</p>
<p>III. August</p>
<p>It is the hottest part of summer, the city is quiet except for the hordes of tourists that have taken over certain parts, especially near the Notre Dame, and their apartment lacks air conditioning. It turns out that Martín had no steady job or domicile in the city at the time of their meeting, was only crashing with friends, and so he has taken one of the two single beds in Andrés’s room of the split level, two bedroom apartment he and Sergio have been renting. It is a convenient arrangement because they can resume their scheming as soon as they wake up in the morning, and continue as long as they want into the night.</p>
<p>It is noon now. Sweat has already made Martín’s shirt damp, sticking in places to his back. His hand is steady on the chalkboard, but his tongue is not. The stream of innuendo it is firing at Sergio contrasts with the strict mathematical formulae that scrawl across it, their mysterious numbers and letters and symbols intractably spelling out the possibilities of an even more subversive act.</p>
<p>As much as the comments delight him, Andrés prefers the quiet obscenity the equations spell out even better, a soon to be felt shock for all the stuffed shirt bankers and their yes men whose sons so shunned him as a teenager at boarding school, who ever looked down on him for his broken home, though they lacked half the natural refinement that Andrés himself possessed.</p>
<p>Martín, he has come to realize, is the embodiment of every hidden desire Andrés ever had, and he does it easily and effortlessly, without a concern for consequence. Sergio is beginning to look like he is about to convulse after the latest of his comments about fellatio, however, and so Andrés goes over to rescue him, sliding an arm over Martín’s shoulder and dragging him back over to the plans he has been working on.</p>
<p>“You must leave Sergio be for a while, Martín cariňo. My little brother has never once met a man or woman he was attracted to, and I pulled him out of school too early, he never got a proper education in the arts of lovemaking. You will shock his innocence ears.”</p>
<p>Sergio only rolls his eyes at both of them. But Martín lets himself be distracted and lead docilly over to inspect the bank’s structural plans that Andrés has been trying so painstakingly to copy, so that the originals can be returned before their absence is noticed. Martín praises his work effusively, but fusses when he notices the ink stains on Andrés’ shirtsleeves, and promises to wash them out for him later. Andrés does not understand why Sergio has been so slow to warm up to Martín, when he is quite possibly the most charming and intelligent man that Andrés has ever met. And if Sergio cannot appreciate his genius because he dislikes his charms, or if he cannot put up with his occasional flirtatious comments, well that is his problem to deal with.</p>
<p>Martín never directs one flirtatious comment at Andrés himself, however. He hasn’t, since the first few weeks of their friendship. He knows Andrés has been seeing a girl he met recently, a waitress at a nearby café whose name is Céline.  Sergio had disapproved, when he’d heard about her, thinking it could jeopardize the plan, but Martín had been wonderfully supportive of his choice.</p>
<p>“The sweetest thing!” He had said. “We must all have a picnic together sometime. Sergio, you can be my date.”</p>
<p>------</p>
<p>IV. November</p>
<p>After five months of planning, Sergio decides that they are ready to bring in the rest of the team. Andrés leaves the recruitment up to him. The HR side of their job has never interested him. If he could, he would someday devise a plan that the two—or three—of them could carry out alone. That would be truly the most perfect plan, Andrés thinks, perfect by measure of its efficiency of method rather than by measure of its reward. They will steal the gold this time, he thinks, and then after that, there will be no need for money. Their next job will be done for the sake of beauty alone.</p>
<p>But their current plan is too ambitious for that, and so Sergio brings in four others in the end, a father and son, and two women. They are introduced under pseudonyms only, as a precaution, in the basement studio apartment Sergio has rented on the other end of the city to serve as their meeting place: Tokio, Nairobi, Denver, and Moscow. Andrés has chosen Berlin as his own name, and Martín, Palermo. Andrés wonders if the choice by Martín is a deliberate comment about their respective temperaments.</p>
<p>When Palermo first meets Nairobi, they immediately hit it off, being of similar natures, and Andrés finds himself suddenly demoted to the position of second best friend, no longer with a monopoly upon his time. Martín is finished with the hydraulic calculations he had been making in order to enable them to reach the gold in the underground chamber by now, and his time is in less demand. Instead of the nights they used to spend together over the plans, he spends them out with Nairobi and the others at the nearby clubs instead. Comes back to their shared bedroom drunk, disheveled, and with strange marks on his neck that Andrés tries not to dwell on. He tries to ignore as well thinking about the speech that Martín had been giving on the virtues of sleeping around when they first met.</p>
<p>Martín, who is usually so attentive to his moodiness, seems oblivious to Andrés’ discontent about the matter, however. He even invites him along on occasion as if nothing is the matter. Just earlier that evening, in fact, Andrés had received a text message inviting him to join them at a bar tonight. But it is a group outing, and his attention will be half diverted rather than on Andrés alone, and so Andrés makes an excuse.</p>
<p>He calls Céline, who he has been ignoring of late, and invites her out to dinner instead. The reservation he makes is at a more upscale restaurant than he has frequented since arriving. He even irons his shirt and puts on one of his velvet jackets which until now has been hanging unworn in his closet. The jacket is one of his favorites, but when he shrugs it on, he finds it suddenly constricting, and the collar too tight and scratchy around his neck. Perhaps he has been putting on weight with all of his confinement within the apartment, he thinks. The jacket has become so deeply irritating by the time he makes it to the venue, that not even Céline’s chatter or the impressive plate of appetizers is enough to keep his mind from distraction. By the time they have reached the main course, she senses this, and interrupts the most recent story she has been telling to complain.</p>
<p>“I haven’t seen you in weeks and you don’t even want to hear about what I did with my friends while you were away?” she asks, pouting.</p>
<p> Andrés is offended. “I was hoping you would be more interested in me,” he returns in kind.</p>
<p>“Just some indication that you cared about my life would be nice,” she says, and frowns.</p>
<p>He gestures to the restaurant and the table before them, “Is all this not enough for you, dear?”</p>
<p>It is not. A few delicate tears have started to slip down her cheeks.  Andrés recognizes the affectation, the artifice in them and is disgusted. She excuses herself to go to the bathroom, and when she returns, her cheeks are blotchy and red, her mascara smeared, her face no longer holding the beauty that had caught his attention when they had met. Make up is another trick of women, he thinks, they use it to deceive you with a false patina of beauty, only to reveal themselves as pale and empty and slightly grotesque underneath.</p>
<p>He may say words to a similar effect, when he breaks off their relationship before they can make it to dessert. She leaves in a huff, shouting that he is the worst man she has ever dated. The waiters look on with scandalized and disdainful faces, and hurry him out as well after they have made sure he has covered the check. The scene she makes further convinces Andrés that he has made the right decision.  He pinches his wrists through the velvet of his jacket once he is unceremoniously ejected onto the sidewalk, but it is too thick to feel anything through.</p>
<p>What is the sadder fate for him, he wonders, to be doomed or to be doomed to a subpar adaptation, to a subpar supporting cast? The whole incident disturbs him enough that rather than call a taxi, he walks all the way back across the city in the rain, without an umbrella, and into the bar whose address Martín had sent him earlier.</p>
<p>When he enters, the place is humming with music and conversation. He removes his sodden coat and suit jacket, spreading them across a nearby chair to dry. Across the room, Martín is dancing with Nairobi and Tokio. He turns at the fluttering movement Andrés’ coat makes, and looks across briefly over his shoulder. When he recognizes who it is, he sends a small, private wink. A little spark of something inside Andrés lights, but he stays, seated sulkily in the corner, watching the dance floor and sipping a drink.</p>
<p>He watches as Tokio and Nairobi beg the bartender for more shots, their lips close but not quite touching as they bite into the lemon between them, their hands wrapped tightly around each other’s shoulders, in an almost maternal gesture that reminds him of his mother’s hands. He watches the fierce light in Martín’s eyes as he lectures them about music, coaxes the band in the corner to play one more song, dragging them both to dance once again to the rapid beat, until the owner finally shews them out at closing time.</p>
<p>Nairobi and Tokio are staying in an apartment in the other direction and make their goodbyes, tripping over each other as they stagger down the narrow cobblestone street. Despite how much he must have also been drinking, Martín is still light on his feet. They walk companionably home. Andrés’ jacket has dried, and the rain has stopped and the streetlights instead glitter against the stones of the street and buildings. The twinkling of them reminding Andrés that it is only a few weeks until Christmas.</p>
<p>When they are back at the apartment, Martín loosens his own scarf and the buttons on his coat, then reaches to help Andrew with his own, his touch along his shoulders warm.</p>
<p>“You didn’t dance tonight,” he remarks.</p>
<p>“Mmm.”</p>
<p>Martín puts both of their coats in the closet, turns to the little turntable he has brought that sits on the small table against the wall and lifts the needle, pushes a button. A soft, slow, syrupy rhythm fills the sitting room. Martín’s hand is back on his shoulder.</p>
<p>“Dance with me.”</p>
<p>Andrés smiles, squarely, nervously. “I’m not sure if I’m in the right mood.”</p>
<p>“Cobarde,” Martín says, and grabs his hand in his, the other hand on his shoulder tightening and giving him a slight push, forcing Andrés to take a step back. The spark grows. His hand tightens around Martín’s and soon they are stepping around the tiny room, Martín in the lead.</p>
<p>Mercifully, he doesn’t try to make conversation, just hums softly along with the music. Andrés finds it is quite relaxing not to have to make all the plans or arrangements for once, not to have to think about his next move, to just let himself be lead where someone else wants to go. Women indeed have it very easy, he thinks. Martín has a barely concealed smile on his face that he suspects is for him, but it doesn’t bother him. It bothers him even less when he is tugged closer than Andrés might allow were they in a public place. When the song ends, Martín’s tucks his head in against his shoulder, and they remain rocking slowly against each together in the dark.</p>
<p>------</p>
<p>V. Christmas</p>
<p>Everything is going very smoothly again after that, perhaps even more smoothly than before. Martín no longer goes out clubbing with Nairobi and Tokio, but spends his evenings in their bedroom chatting and sharing a bottle of wine, while Andrés paints in the corner. When Andrés asks him why he doesn’t join the others anymore, he says only that he is getting too old for that. That he is going to take up a more refined, more mature lifestyle now, and that it is about time. And how much easier it will be when they have the money from this heist.</p>
<p>Andrés agrees, pleased with the thought. “Only the best wines for you then, my friend, I’ll take you to the most elite clubs in Spain afterwards. We’ll buy exquisitely tailored suits before we go. Everyone will want to dance with you.”</p>
<p>Sergio, or rather, The Professor, as Andrés has learned to call his brother in public now, with very little need for acting, gives them Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off from the usual training sessions they’ve been holding in the studio. Tokio thanks him when she hears the news, and then pats him on the head, jetting before Sergio can regains his speech to complain, taking Nairobi and Denver with her and mumbling something about ice skates.  Moscow says he is too old for that, but that he might use the time to take a walk around the city and to get himself some fresh air, that he will see them in a few days.</p>
<p>When the rest have departed, and they are back in their two-bedroom apartment, Sergio takes him aside and tells Andrés that the real reason for the holiday is that he has a lead for a teenager with some computer skills he wants to follow up on. He will take his car and be back the day after Christmas. As Andrés watches him load his suitcase into the hatchback, Sergio warns him not to get in any trouble while he is away.</p>
<p>“Do you think Martín and I are like the rest of your little students, Professor?” Andrés scolds. Sergio does not dignify that with a reply, sliding into the driver’s seat and heading off without a backwards glance.</p>
<p>He and Martín end up with the apartment to themselves. Andrés spends the morning before Christmas baking in the kitchen downstairs, while Martín reads some engineering magazines he’s recently acquired in the sitting room. He has found a record of some old chorale music, sung by Benedictine monks, and it is playing softly over his record player.</p>
<p>It all feels very serene and domestic in a way that Andrés is not accustomed to until it doesn’t.</p>
<p>Andrés had often imagined what an argument with Martín would be like. In his head, he’d imagined it would involve a great deal of both of them shouting, perhaps Martín throwing objects at him along with his extensive vocabulary of curse words. He’d assumed also that it would all be over quickly, and that they would be back to laughing together about it after a short time. In actuality, it happens exactly the opposite as he’d envisioned.</p>
<p>It starts out innocuous enough. So much so that Andrés doesn’t even realize it is happening until it is, and wonders afterwards if it really did happen. He is headed to the door on Christmas Eve, thinking to make a run to the store down the street if it is still open to buy some fruit for them for breakfast, when Martín suddenly looks up from his reading and asks--</p>
<p>“Is Céline spending the holidays away with her family? I haven’t heard you mention her in a while.”</p>
<p>“We broke up last month,” Andrés says, with a dismissive wave of a hand.</p>
<p>Martín stills and his face softens. “You broke up with Céline? You didn’t say,” he speaks carefully.</p>
<p>“I didn’t think it was relevant.” Andrés says, and he reaches into the closet for his hat.</p>
<p>It is the wrong answer. When Andrés turns back around, Martín’s face is no longer soft.</p>
<p>“Is there any other irrelevant information you forgot tell me,” he asks, his voice going deceptively low and pleasant. “Like maybe the fact that your brother is off recruiting a computer analyst because he doesn’t trust my hand calculations and wants someone else to rerun them?”</p>
<p>“What?!”—Andrés huffs in the middle of settling the hat on his head, and then--when Martín continues to gaze back at him unperturbed--“For God’s sake, Martín, that isn’t the reason he’s doing it. And must we discuss this now? It isn’t that big of a deal.”</p>
<p>“If it isn’t that big of a deal, I don’t know why you two had to hide it from me. I’d appreciate you humoring me and explaining it to me now, though.”</p>
<p>“Martín,” Andrés says, trying to soften his voice, aiming to be conciliatory. “You know how you get sometimes when you run your mouth off. Sergio thought it was best to limit everyone’s knowledge about new recruits in case they don’t work out or tip us off to the police. And if anyone ever gets arrested, the less we know the better. We only wanted to protect you.”</p>
<p>“No, I get it very clearly. I’m to be lumped in with the rest of the students, now that I’m no longer needed. Maybe I should just take the plans with me, if I’m so extraneous. You can hire the other guy and toss me completely.”</p>
<p>“Martín, don’t be ridiculous.”</p>
<p>“Am I?”</p>
<p>“Come now, is this really what you are so upset about?” Andrés wheedles. “You were quite happy, as was I, to leave the recruiting to him before. Is this actually about that, or is it about the fact that I didn’t tell you about Céline earlier. What, were you expecting that I would leave her and then run straight into your arms afterwards?”</p>
<p>He manages an incredulous laugh, at that final suggestion. Andrés means it to highlight the absurdity of their argument, but instead it seems to suck all the air out of the room. Martín does not deny it, which Andrés resents. And his resentment drives his tongue further, attempting to fill the uncomfortable space that Martín is refusing to fill with a witty or scathing reply of his own.</p>
<p>“Listen, Martín. I think maybe you like me too much, and it’s causing you to get paranoid. Perhaps it’s better if you take a break from”—he gestures around the apartment—“all this. As you said, we have your calculations, your presence isn’t needed. Go spend some time with Nairobi or Tokio. Find someone else to take your mind off it. And then when you come back, we can be like we were before.”</p>
<p>He is reminded of what he had said in their first conversation about Love, and adds, more tentatively--</p>
<p>“I understand that I am handsome, and that someone--like you--might find me distracting. I’ll understand even if you want to get out of the Plan entirely.”</p>
<p>“You asshole,” Martín finally says, but he sounds defeated rather than angry. “You are your own worst enemy. I was quite happy to aid and abet you when your enemies were just other people. But I won’t help you with this.”</p>
<p>Andrés wonders what he means by that. He is fascinated by the tears streaming from Martín’s eyes as he says it, tears that he doesn’t bother to hide. He feels a strange, unprompted desire to grasp him by the back of his head, and to put his tongue against them, to taste their saltiness and confirm they are not a crocodile’s. And then to drag his tongue further down across the rougher surface of his cheek, where he has not shaved for two days. That final thought startles him.</p>
<p>“I’m going out to the store,” he says, and he grips the doorknob instead, twists it, and leaves the apartment.</p>
<p>When Andrés returns, it seems that Martín has indeed taken his suggestion and left. All of his scant belongings, including the record player, are now missing from the bedroom and the apartment, and his jacket and scarf no longer hang in the closet. The only things of his left are his calculations and plans, still lying open on the desk. There is no other note.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>"He said to Thomas, "Reach here with your finger, and see my hands; </em> <em>and reach here your hand and put it into my side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing." - </em>John 20:27</p>
<p> </p>
<p>VI. February</p>
<p>Andrés expects Martín’s mood to pass, and to find him on their doorstep or perhaps in his room one night, waiting to give Andrés a chance to apologize, but he doesn’t reappear. Nairobi and Tokio have not seen him either, or at least if they have, they aren’t telling him where he is. Almost a month and a half of their estrangement goes by with no resolution.</p>
<p>Sergio is surprisingly unbothered by their falling out. When he’d returned to their apartment from his trip, Andrés had told him curtly that the plan was off. They had argued, and when Sergio had discovered the reason for Martín’s departure, that perhaps Andrés had implied his presence was unnecessary now, he had retorted that in fact both Andrés and Martín were expendable at this point.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to know any more about it,” he’d said about their quarrel. “You’re both such romantics about it, but romance isn’t necessary for the plan. Most likely you’ll sort it out, and if not, well, I’ll just write you both out of it, and the rest of us will finish it from here. But until then, stay out of the way.”</p>
<p>It is the coldest part of the winter, and Andrés spends his days wandering the city, an offseason tourist. He is careful not to frequent any place where he might run into Martín. If Martín has even stayed in Paris. If that was the game. He is distantly aware that women have done this before, attempted this kind of manipulation, this silent treatment, to squeeze some gesture of affection out of him, but that it had not worked. Andrés’ heart is after all quite more frozen than the icicles currently hanging from the street lamps.</p>
<p>He finds the winter has been unkind to his body as well. His fingers no longer just shake now, he has started to feel strange tingling sensations in them when he is under stress, little electrical charges shooting down them and taking him by surprise. Andrés wonders which is the better feeling, this sensation he is feeling, which means something is wrong, or the numbness that is likely to follow, that won't even alert him to the problem.</p>
<p>On one particularly cold morning, Andrés walks into the Notre Dame for the first time. His artist’s eyes are drawn at first to its grandest elements, to the high vaults around the nave and the rose windows. The beauty of them seems to hurt now. He would almost prefer instead the monstrously grotesque gargoyles that guard its exterior. He is so distracted with looking up as he wanders the cathedral, that he backs up against a pillar. He turns, and sees that above it there is a statue of a woman. In her arms she holds a child, but his face is rendered in the manner of an adult. He thinks about his own mother, the only one who might understand, and wonders if she still exists somewhere.  He goes over to main alter. There is no one to notice him do it, but something compels him to drop a few coins into the donation box first. Then he lights a candle and gets down on his knees.</p>
<p>“<em>Ave María Purísima, sin pecado concebida,” </em>he begins.<em>“I feel so weak lately…"  </em>Here he runs out of words. The rest of his petition is a series of formless thoughts, but he hopes whoever is listening will understand.</p>
<p>There is no response, but the candle continues to glow when he leaves the cathedral, passing under the portal of the Virgin, where the lintel depicts her on her deathbed.</p>
<p>---------</p>
<p>VII. Night</p>
<p>Andrés vows to be good after that, but when he receives no response or relief from his condition, when after a week, his fingers still tremble even after his injection, when he slips once going up the stairs, he grows upset. He decides to take the opposite tactic. To tempt fate. And so, one evening, he returns to the bar where he and Martín first met.</p>
<p>As he suspected, possibly hoped, Martín is there. He has his face buried in his drink and does not see him immediately. With his detached, artist’s eye, Andrés observes that he looks every bit the Byronic hero. His shirt needs straightening, his face is pale. His eyes deeply sorrowful. Andrés wishes to paint him in this setting, suddenly, with his shirt half unbuttoned, perhaps with the drink spilling from his hands. Another separate part of him, he observes distantly, itches to fix him instead, to neatly do up the undone buttons of his shirt. But rather than indulge either instinct, Andrés asks for a menu and goes to sit at one of the far tables.</p>
<p>When he raises his hand to get the attention of the waiter to make his order, Martín happens to glance over, and their eyes meet. He flinches slightly with recognition, but recovers, and turns away quickly, raising his own hand to the bartender. <em>If he is calling for his tab</em>, Andrés thinks, but Martín doesn’t. He stays there perched on the stool at the bar while he finishes another glass. When it is finished, he rises and crosses the room deliberately to start a conversation with a big, bearded man in the corner.</p>
<p>Andrés has never watched him come onto a man before. Martín had been careful before, for reasons he had not understood until recently, not to do it in front of him. He has no such compunction tonight. He’s putting on a very convincing show of the Martín that Andrés remembers, touching the other man unnecessarily, smiling at him and laughing at his jokes—If Andrés had not seen his face, unguarded as it was earlier, he might almost believe the charm was real.</p>
<p>Andrés glances over at them, intermittently, and wonders what they could possibly be discussing of any interest. The man he is chatting up appears too rough to be any connoisseur of culture, and his eyes are too earnest as he returns Martín’s gaze. Andrés grips his silverware, poking the lamb chop that’s been placed in front of him. Such an innocent thing, he thinks, it deserves its fate. Martín is not innocent, and never has been, at least he hasn’t been since the days that they met. Has never once let himself be taken advantage of. Andrés had said as much, once, to Nairobi, earlier on, when she’d expressed concern that he was leading Martín on. When he had mentioned it to Martín himself, he’d also laughed, though not quite so deeply as usual, and then the next day Andrés had overheard him telling her to stay out of things she knew nothing about.</p>
<p>The poor man that Martín is chatting up now also knows nothing about what this is about. Doesn’t realize, as Martín makes a show of taking the card he offers and copying down the man’s number, of sliding it into his wallet and then sliding the wallet into the back pocket of his too tight jeans, that he’s just a useful instrument in this game, this argument, that they’ve been having since they met, just a number to plug in to an equation to get the desired result. Andrés has resisted because of his pride. It seems there are certain laws of physics that even he cannot evade. He thinks about letting Martín win, and that thought seals his defeat.</p>
<p>He finishes the lambchop. Lays the knife back down on the plate, so carefully that it barely makes a sound. Taking one last sip from his glass of wine and leaving enough bills to cover his tab, he rises smoothly from the table. When he reaches his side, Martín does not turn, but pretends to ignore him, pretends the music is too loud to hear the sound of his own name being called, his companion’s conversation that scintillating. Andrés takes his hand instead and places it upon Martín’s shoulder, then walks his fingers down his arm, and grasps his wrist, there against the skin where the sleeves have been rolled up.</p>
<p>“Martín, I need you,” he says against his ear, so that there is no doubt that he can hear the words.</p>
<p>Martín’s body unspools next to him, then.  He allows himself to be tugged away, out of the other man’s space, all the way out of the bar.</p>
<p>They do not look or speak to each other on the walk back to the apartment, Andrés’ hand gripping his wrist the whole way, using his weaker left hand to punch in the code at the entrance. He gets it right on the third attempt, and then Andrés finally drops his hold on Martín to open the door and enter. Martín, unbound, follows. Andrés removes his coat and Martín’s, hanging them both neatly in the closet, side by side once again. Martín has been unnaturally quiet since they had left the bar, as if he is still ignoring him, when Andrés knows, they both know, that things have changed. The room is dark-- Sergio must already be asleep.</p>
<p>Andrés grabs Martín’s wrist again and walks him upstairs to his—to their—room. When the door is safely closed behind them, he pushes Martín back against it, and finally, finally gazes into his eyes. There it is, that fragile, longing look from the day they met, looking back at him again, but deeper now. Andrés wraps his right hand loosely around Martín’s throat, feels the rhythm of his breathing under it increase. He slides the fingers of his other hand down over the open collar of his button down, undoing the remaining buttons as he goes.</p>
<p>When his fingers reach Martín’s waist, he reaches around to his back pocket for the wallet, picking it. While they remain standing there, still so close that Martín’s quickened breathing feels warm against his face, Andrés brings it between them and flips it open. He drops his hand from around Martín’s neck and uses it to slide the offensive card out. It lies there between them, inked with forceful, confident numbers in Martín’s scrawl, as if it were the confession of a crime. As they both stare down at it, Andrés crumples it tightly between his hand, and then lets it fall to the ground, where it skitters across the floor.</p>
<p>When their eyes raise again to meet each other, Andrés kisses him. Andrés kisses him and doesn’t stop. He presses Martín back against the door and tries to crawl inside his mouth. Martín’s hands move, but only to the back of head to pull him closer. His eyes are still open, and they still look at Andrés as if they are asking for something. Andrés realizes that he doesn’t, hasn’t ever minded the asking. And more astonishingly, he finds he doesn’t really mind whatever Martín wants to take from his own expression, whatever his own eyes might be saying back.</p>
<p>Eventually, he lets his lips wander down over the stubble still present on Martín's cheeks and towards his neck, biting down. Martín’s head falls back to allow it, his eyes falling closed. With his hands, Andrés finds the softness of his belly, and from there his belt, which he undoes, and then finally his cock. When he wraps his fingers around it, Martín, silent since they left the bar, cries out against Andrés’ tongue.</p>
<p>Andrés swallows the cry, he steals everything.</p>
<p>-------</p>
<p>VIII. Morning</p>
<p>A bright sunshine peaks through the window and wakes Andrés early. Around him, the room is illuminated. It looks different, as if a storm has passed through it and left a kind of peaceful ruin behind. The sheets of Andrés’ single bed are twisted, their clothing items and the pillows lie strewn on the floor, Martín has been forced to lie upon his shoulder instead. Andrés runs his fingers softly through Martín’s hair, and though he murmurs he does not wake. He slides out, silently, trying not to rouse him. His poor Martín, he thinks, he’s spent too many long nights on his calculations this past year, and then too many out drinking, he needs to sleep. He takes one of the pillows from the floor and places it under his head, straightens the white sheet to cover his body and the marks upon it. He tidies the clothes as well, washes his face, and slips on his dressing gown. Decides to go downstairs to make something for them both for breakfast.</p>
<p>When Andrés reaches the kitchen, Sergio is seated already at the table with his coffee and a slice of toast.</p>
<p>“Good morning,” he tentatively calls out when he sees him enter. “Is everything okay?”</p>
<p>“Very much so.”</p>
<p>Despite the only partially repaired chaos above, the scene downstairs is immaculate, but Sergio must have intuited something, because--</p>
<p>“Is the Plan back on?” he asks.</p>
<p>“It was never off,” Andrés affirms, simply, easily, as he reaches for the kettle and two teacups. Perhaps the walls are too thin in this neighborhood, he muses. Andrés should look into finding them a more suitable accommodation to finish the plan. This new persona, this new part he’s suddenly been offered requires something less Bohemian. A castle or monastery of some sort, perhaps in the style of the renaissance.</p>
<p>Sergio interrupts his architectural daydreaming-- “This is why I’ve always said, personal relationships should not get involved in heists. You know how jealous you act about your lovers. You do it every time and drive them away. I’m glad you’ve managed to fix things for now, but please, for once, for the sake of the plan this time. Don’t… Don’t fuck this up.”</p>
<p>Andrés sets the tray of teacups and melon slices he’s made up back down on the counter, smiling at his brother, and lending him his attention.</p>
<p>“Don’t be ridiculous, Sergio, <em>hermano m</em><em>ío</em>, of course we will. Some day, I’ll find another woman. Martín will cheat on me after one of our fights. Maybe, if the incentive or pressure is enough, he’ll steal the plans or the gold and run off on me. And who could blame him, when he knows I’d do the same. That’s life, betrayal is a part of love. But jealousy?”—he tosses his head back and scoffs—"Whatever Martín wins, he wins for both of us. Why, I’d sooner be jealous of my own hand.”</p>
<p>He looks down, then, at his trembling fingers.</p>
<p>“Are you certain you’re okay?” Sergio persists, skeptical, a touch of concern creeping into his eyes.</p>
<p>Andrés raises one of the fingers to his cheek, feels something liquid and slippery upon it, and slightly bewildered, touches it to his tongue to taste the salt.</p>
<p>“It must be because I’m happy,” he says, with awe.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This is the first story I’ve written for this pairing, and I probably owe a thanks to all of the wonderful Berlermo authors whose work I’ve enjoyed in the past for inspiration.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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